Martin’s analysis continues to bolster Earhart truth

The brilliant news analyst David Martin(DCDave.com)has been alone among all media operatives large and small in recognizing and supporting the truth from the beginning of the fading media flap that erupted July 5 when NBC News announced that an unclassified Office of Naval Intelligence photo found at the National Archives in College Park, Md., by former federal investigator Les Kinney might be the smoking gun in the Earhart disappearance.

Bringing you up to date, the photo was the centerpiece of the two-hour July 9 History Channel propaganda exercise, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence.” I lost no time in becoming the first to publicly denounce the false claims made by Kinney and MorningstarEntertainment operatives who descended upon network airwaves to promote the coming History Channel program. Later July 5, I published “July 9 Earhart special tofeature bogus photo claims.” Two days later, Martin, who shared my pessimism about a documentary predicated on such a shaky foundation as the ONI Jaluit photo, published“Press Touts Dubious Earhart Photo.” Meanwhile, the media had already begun their blanket denunciations of the photo claims, seemingly on cue.

Perhaps everyone should have been a bit more skeptical when the British Guardiancame out with its articlewith the confident sweeping headline, “Blogger discredits claim Amelia Earhart was taken prisoner by Japan.” (Bold emphasis Campbell’s throughout.) As we noted in our previousarticlein which we accepted the “discovery” of the photo in a 1935 Japanese travel book as valid, the apparent discrediting of the photo did absolutely nothing to undermine the wealth of evidence that Earhart was, indeed, captured by the Japanese, in spite of The Guardian’s major overselling of the new purported evidence: “But serious doubts now surround the film’s premise after a Tokyo-based blogger unearthed the same photograph in the archives of the National Diet Library, Japan’s national library. ” (Emphasis added)

A recent photo of news analyst and world traveler David Martin at Jeju (Cheju) Island, South Korea. (Photo courtesy David Martin.)

The Guardiandid go to some length to give the discovery quite an appearance of authenticity. They provided links to the travel book including the photo and page numbers. In addition, they gave us these quotes from the blogger himself:

Kota Yamano, a military history blogger who unearthed the Japanese photograph, said it took him just 30 minutes to effectively debunk the documentary’s central claim.

“I have never believed the theory that Earhart was captured by the Japanese military, so I decided to find out for myself,” Yamano told the Guardian. “I was sure that the same photo must be on record in Japan.”

Yamano ran an online search using the keyword “Jaluit atoll” and a decade-long timeframe starting in 1930.

“The photo was the 10th item that came up,” he said. “I was really happy when I saw it. I find it strange that the documentary makers didn’t confirm the date of the photograph or the publication in which it originally appeared. That’s the first thing they should have done.”

The initial impression one gets—the impression that The Guardian clearly wanted us to take with us—is that this Yamano is quite an enterprising researcher. But the impression does not bear close scrutiny well.

Yamano claims that the motivation for his effort was the belief that the Japanese military did not capture Earhart. The main problem of the supposed evidence presented by the photo is that it is not strong enough to convince any skeptical person that it actually shows Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan in the custody of the Japanese. The natural reaction of a predisposed doubter is simply to reject the photo out of hand.

The second paragraph in the Yamano quote, then, amounts to a non sequitur. From the outset, what could conducting a search for a copy of the photograph presented in the History Channel program have to do with anything? It really looks like a waste of time. Did Yamano have some premonition that he might find evidence that would apparently prove that the photograph had been taken well before Earhart’s disappearance? Going in, the endeavor looks like a wild goose chase.

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24 responses

With all due respect, I find your entire line of reasoning in this matter to be bordering on “the (blogger) lady doth protest too much methinks”.

TIGHAR is a money making scam. Les Kinney shares most of your views and mine as well. Devoting pages and pages of your blog trying to discredit this photo (when it has been shown that this could have been a valid photo since the dock was not built at the time of the Japanese “book’s” publication) is making you and your buddy DCDave look like raving mad conspiracy theorists.

It may be them. It may not be them. It’s no smoking gun, but it does provide some interesting insight supporting YOUR ultimate theory.

Does the US or Japan Government want the truth to come out? No.

Since when do the Free Press and Wikipedia conspire with Government(s) to suppress the truth in a Free Society? For me, that is a bridge too far to follow.

You seem to have a problem reading for comprehension, Fly. My problem is not that I protest too much, but that too many others blindly accept bad evidence because it’s in the service of the truth in the Marshalls-Saipan scenario. You see what happens when bad evidence is touted by the media — it’s soon shot down along with the rest of the truth.

Contrary to your statement, the photo does not provide any interesting “insight” into the truth. The whole dreary scene this photo has inspired provides insight only into the basest motivations of those who initially made the absurd claims about it. Further, I have no “theories,” about the Earhart case. We have the truth that’s been surrounded and distorted by lies that have been glorified as theories for 80 years. You write as if you haven’t read Truth at Last, or if you have, you need to read it again.
MC

flyxlsa, I agree with you completely and I could not have said it better. I too cannot figure out why Mike is so upset about that photo and like you said it points to the theory of the Japaneses capture of Earhart a theory that Mike has worked on for a very long time.

See my 10:05 a.m. comment. Neither of you sees this story clearly. It’s not my fault that you don’t get it. I do all I can to explain, but you see only Marshalls-Saipan, and anything, even a ridiculous photo put forward to obviously discredit the truth, should be accepted, in your views.
MC

I agree with your take on this, TIm. Les Kinney did solid work and deserves credit for that work. The “Japanese blogger” disinformation campaign quickly fell apart. The photo is the smoking gun as far as I am concerned and when it surfaced I thought Mike would be the first to applaud it’s discovery. His subsequent attacks upon the photo are highly irrational and caught me completely off guard.

“Highly irrational,” Richard? You are the one who is highly irrational, if you think anyone should embrace lies about bogus photos in order to advance the truth. Why is it such a huge mental leap for you to understand that because I reject the photo, I don’t therefore reject the truth that I’ve spent 30 years studying and writing about? It’s readers like you and Tim, who exhibit zero critical thinking ability, that move me to fear there’s no hope at all for the truth to prevail in the Earhart case. Further comments from either of you in this vein are not going up on this blog.
MC

I tried to run a search as the Japanese blogger dig using Jaluit Atoll as the keywords and the decade time frame as he did. After several different search engines…nothing even remotely like the photo came up.

“Since when do the Free Press and Wikipedia conspire with Government(s) to suppress the truth in a Free Society?”

I’m not sure what to make of that question, what with the capitalization of “Free Press” and “Free Society,” but assuming that those are just errors, I think the rhetorical question reflects an exraordinary degree of naivete here in the year of our Lord 2017. When does the mainstream press Western press not conspire with the dominant governments in the Western world to suppress the truth would be a better question. If anyone thinks we’re getting the straight scoop from our media on, say, the JFK assassination or 9/11, to name just two major questions, I can’t imagine why they would even bother to read about what happened to Amelia Earhart on an independent truth-seeking web site such as this.

The truth about Earhart is a taboo subject to the mainstream media. Any halfway informed person on the subject knows this. When they gave their big build-up to the History Channel program with the very ambiguous photograph as its centerpiece you had to know that it was not because of any burning love of the truth on their part. To the contrary, you really had to suspect an ulterior motive behind it, and it didn’t take them very long to show just what that was.

I read Earhart Truth, TWICE. As for theory vs. fact, I agree that without a doubt the “preponderance of the evidence” points toward Saigon, but I’m not about to bet my life on this theory being established FACT until we have some physically tangible evidence to collaborate the oral testimony.

Yo Flyshit,
Or whoever you are: Are you a troll? Not stating your real name isn’t a good start, and a reader whose opinion I respect has suggested that you are being paid to disrupt the discussions on this blog. I thought not, that you were just a dumbass. But your latest comment seems to lend more weight to the idea that you are indeed a troll. As for your other obtuse comment, it didn’t make the cut, nor will any further agitating remarks from you. My blog, my rules, and I don’t give a damn what you or others might think.
MC

Flyshit’s real name is Tim Ruhl and I live in Hershey, PA.
flyxlsa stands for FLY BY LIGHT SPORT AIRCRAFT.
That is my real face and my wordpress profile detail has my name listed.
@biztechrx Twitterhttps://www.facebook.com/TimothyRuhl

I’m not sure why you all seem to freakin’ attack someone who simply expresses another viewpoint?

I receive no compensation, nor am I “egged on” by any third party, for posting here.

I admittedly trolled the TIGHAR Facebook page and was promptly kicked off.

I have a casual interest in Amelia Earhart, just like many folks here.

I had a brain fart on the Saigon thing and made a mistake on my word choice on a word/term I rarely use in my world of Math and IT. You guys are the writers/wordsmiths – certainly and admittedly not me!

The simple fact is that you cannot fight for the truth with lies. To do so is to cast honor and integrity on the trash heap. That is unacceptable. It is non-negotiable. We must hold fast to this principle.

Mike & Dave are absolutely correct in their assertions on the matter. There has been a CHARADE played upon the American public for the last 80 years. It’s objective is to continuously mislead, misinform and distract from the *TRUTH. So many fall pry to these DiStRaCtIoNs and so few have the intellect & insight to see it.
I commend & praise Mike’s integrity, truth and objectivity on this analysis.

“…few have the intellect & insight to see it.”
Say what?
Is this a blog about Amelia Earhart or a “cult following” of the absolute, final and indisputable Earhart Truth as espoused by your “Great Leader(s)”?
Both my intellect and insight abilities are quite fine thank you.
Apparently I simply missed drinking the proper Kool Aid.
It seems cognitive bias is strong on this blog.
IMHO

This is not the tone of a person who is seriously interested in the truth. It reeks of the ignorant swagger of the schoolyard bully who wants to intimidate people who have the audacity to question the conventional wisdom. It reflects precisely the sort of herd-think appeal of what I have called the “Children’s Fantasy Writers” of the mainstream media: http://www.dcdave.com/article1/081498.htm.

At the very least Mr. Ruhl has demonstrated that he is out of his depth outside the world of Math [sic] and IT, but yet he would weigh in on a subject, filled with bluster, attacking people who he must concede know a great deal more about that subject than he does. You must forgive me for suspecting that what we see at work here is an example of the very last of the Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression: http://www.dcdave.com/article3/991228.html.

Dave,
Thanks so much. Your Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression: http://www.dcdave.com/article3/991228.html should be mandatory reading for anyone who would claim any understanding of the depths to which our media would sink to deceive us about the most important stories of our time. No one has ever said it better or more succinctly.
MC

You’re jumping to conclusions and letting your imagination run away from you. Nobody on this site is drinking purple cool aid, nor following some great leader. The photo Les Kinney found, has some PrObLeMs with it. If the History Channel cared about the *TRUTH, they would have included Mike Campbell in their production, they didn’t. Instead they decided to promote their own agenda and have left the public even more CoNfUsEd?

If you’re going to profess what happened to Amelia Earhart, at least GET IT *RIGHT! Back it up with *PROOF – *HARD EVIDENCE – *FACTS and *TESTIMONIES as Mike has.

There is no cult following, no secret brotherhood, unbroken circle, foot stomping, unusual handshake, nor chairs formed in a triangle. If anything, those of us who comment on Mike’s wordpress, are FREE THINKERS taking COMMAND under the *RIGHT conditions.

This picture looks like it was made by an unskilled photographer and at a carnival.

Getting to the heart of what’s at issue here, let’s go back to the most objectionable thing in Mr. Ruhl’s opening sally: “Since when do the Free Press and Wikipedia conspire with Government(s) to suppress the truth in a Free Society? For me, that is a bridge too far to follow.”

It’s very hard for me to believe his claim that he has read “Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last” at all, because my reaction to it prompted me to lead off my review of the first edition with the following poem:

Chilling Awakening

Few things are more unsettling,
From experience I know,
Than to feel a building shaken
By quaking ground below.

But I’ve felt one discomfiture
Of almost comparable size,
Discovering that our “free” press
Purveys official lies.

I think the MSM ignoring a story like Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s IT Scandal, while at the same time turning a blind eye towards HRC’s many crimes and running around screaming “Russia!” at every turn, is very troubling.

Welcome back to the office, Tim. I hope you had a nice, relaxing weekend.

Your work week started poorly. though, what with that first sentence. In fact, the Seth Rich matter has not escaped my attention as one can read in my May 25th article, “Seth Rich Equals Vince Foster?” http://dcdave.com/article5/170525.htm

You might want to read that article at least three times, because, taking you at your word, TWICE doesn’t seem to do the job for you.

The Second Edition of “Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last,” is a large 7″ by 10″ paperback offering 370 pages at the same low retail price of $19.95, and significantly less at Amazon.com. The book adds two chapters, a new foreword, several new subsections, the most recent discoveries, rare photos and a near-total rewrite to the mountain of overwhelming witness testimony and documentation presented in the first edition of “Truth at Last. ”

Even as a child, Amelia had the look of someone destined for greatness. In this photo, she seems to be gazing at events far away in time and space. Who can fathom it?

This is a priceless portrait of our heroine at the tender age of 7. She seems to be peering into timelessness, as if she can actually see the amazing adventures that are in store for her — and us. Who can fathom it?

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Amelia at Spadina Military Hospital, Toronto, Canada, circa 1917-’18

While visiting Muriel at St. Margaret’s College in Toronto in 1917, Amelia encountered three Canadian soldiers who had lost a leg, and decided, on the spot, to join the war effort. She enrolled in the Voluntary Aid Detachment and was assigned to the Spadina Military Hospital. “Sister Amelia soon became a favorite among the wounded and discouraged men,” Muriel wrote.

Arrival at Londonderry, Ireland, May 21, 1932

Earhart had spent the last 15 hours tossed by dangerous storms over the North Atlantic, contending with failing machinery and sipping a can of tomato juice to calm her queasy stomach. That day—May 21, 1932—she planned to end her journey at Paris’ Le Bourget airfield, where exactly five years earlier Charles Lindbergh had completed the first solo transatlantic flight. When her Vega’s reserve fuel tank sprang a leak and flames began engulfing the exhaust manifold, however, Earhart wound up navigating to a Northern Ireland pasture. From that moment , Amelia Earhart’s star shined brightest, and her like has never been seen since.

Acclaim at Londonderry

Another great photo of Amelia, as she prepares to take off from Derry, Northren Ireland, and fly on to London, where worldwide fame awaited. After a flight lasting 14 hours, 56 minutes during which she contended with strong northerly winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems, Earhart landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. The landing was witnessed by Cecil King and T. Sawyer. When a farm hand asked, “Have you flown far?” Earhart replied, “From America.” The site now is the home of a small museum, the Amelia Earhart Centre.

Summer 1960: The Saipan Truth comes out

The headline story of the May 27, 1960 edition of the San Mateo Times was the first of several stories written by ace reporter Linwood Day that set the stage for Fred Goerner’s first visit to Saipan in mid-June 1960 and led Goerner’s 1966 bestseller, “The Search for Amelia Earhart.” Day worked closely by phone with Goerner, and on July 1, 1960, the Earhart frenzy reached its peak, with the Times announcing “Amelia Earhart Mystery Is Solved” in a 100-point banner headline accross its front page.

This story appeared in the San Mateo Times “Family Weekly” news magazine on July 3, 1960. The sensational account revealed details of her life as an 11-year-old on 1937 Saipan, but the true picture of what she actually saw that day remains in question. Was it a seaplane or a landplane in trouble that landed at Tanapag Harbor?

Fred Goerner with witness Manual Aldan, Saipan, 1960

Fred Goerner with witness Manuel Aldan on Saipan, June 1960. Aldan was a dentist whose practice was restricted to Japanese officers in 1937, and though he didn’t see the American fliers, he heard much about them from his patients. Aldan told Goerner that one officer identified the white woman as “Earharto!” (Courtesy San Francisco Library Special Collections.)

The only bestseller ever penned on the Earhart disappearance, “Search” sold over 400,000 copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for six months. In September 1966, Time magazine’s scathing review, titled “Sinister Conspiracy,” set the original tone for what has become several generations of media aversion to the truth about Amelia’s death on Saipan.

This story, which announced Thomas E. Devine’s Saipan gravesite claim, appeared in the San Mateo Times on July 16, 1960. Devine returned to Saipan in 1963 and located the gravesite shown to him by the Okinawan woman in August 1945, but did not share his find with Fred Goerner. Instead Devine planned to return to Saipan by himself, but he never again got the opportunity.

Thomas E. Devine, whose involvement with events surrounding the discovery and destruction of Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10E as a 28-year-old Army postal sergeant on Saipan in July 1944 shaped the rest of his life. Devine’s 1987 classic, “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident,” is among the most important books about the Earhart disappearance ever penned.

Thomas E. Devine’s “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident” (1987) is Devine’s first-person account of his eyewitness experiences on Saipan, where he saw Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10, NR 16020 on three occasions, the final time the plane was in flames. Devine’s book is among the most important ever penned in revealing the truth about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

On November 13, 1970, the Japan Times reported, for the first time, the shocking claims of Mrs. Michiko Sugita, who was told of Amelia Earhart’s execution on Saipan in 1937. Sugita, the eleven-year-old daughter of the civilian chief of police on Saipan in 1937, told the Japan Times in 1970 that Japanese military police shot Amelia Earhart as a spy there. Sugita, the first Japanese national to report Earhart’s presence on Saipan, corresponded for a time with Thomas E. Devine, but later went missing and his letters were returned, marked, “No such person, unknown.”

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, Japanese national, Earhart witness

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, whose account as told to the Japan Times in 1970 remains the only testimony from a Japanese national that attests to Amelia Earhart’s presence and death on Saipan following her July 2, 1937 disappearance. Sugitia corresponded with Thomas E. Devine for a few years in the mid-1970s before Devine’s letters were returned with the notation, “No such person. Return to sender.”

This story appeared at the top of page 1 in the July 13, 1937 edition of the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)-Globe Times. “Vague and unconfirmed rumors that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan have been rescued by a Japanese fishing boat without a radio,” the report began, “and therefore unable to make any report, found no verification here today, but plunged Tokio [sic] into a fever of excitement.” The story was quickly squelched in Japan, and no follow-up was done. (Courtesy Woody Peard.)

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz: Fred Goerner’s most respected informant

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, circa 1942, the last of the Navy’s 5-star admirals. In late March 1965, a week before his meeting with General Wallace M. Greene Jr. at Marine Corps Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Nimitz called Goerner in San Francisco. “Now that you’re going to Washington, Fred, I want to tell you Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese,” Goerner claimed Nimitz told him. The admiral’s revelation appeared to be a monumental breakthrough for the determined newsman, and is known even to many casual observers of the Earhart matter. “After five years of effort, the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the Pacific was telling me it had not been wasted,” Goerner wrote.

Marshall Islands 50th Anniversary Commemorative Stamps, 1987

The independent Republic of the Marshalls Islands issued these four postage stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s landing at Mili Atoll and pickup by the Japanese survey ship Koshu in July 1937. To the Marshallese people, the Earhart disappearance is no mystery or rumor, but a stone cold fact.